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Police question man about slaying of Clemente High student

Chicago Tribune reporter Peter Nickeas provides the overnight crime report, including details on the questioning of a man in the slaying of Frances Colon, the Clemente High School student killed last week. (Posted on: Feb. 22, 2013.)

By Peter NickeasTribune reporter

10:18 a.m. EST, February 22, 2013

Police are questioning a 34-year-old man about the slaying of Frances Colon, the third Clemente High School student killed this year.

Colon, 18, was shot in the back last Friday evening in the 1100 block of North Pulaski Road in the West Humboldt Park neighborhood. Police believe she was not the intended target and was shot as someone else ran from the gunman.

Colon's father, Jose Colon Jr., said he was grateful for the latest development but still waiting for more information. "I'm happy that the police did their thing," he said.

Colon is the third student at Roberto Clemente to be killed this school year, according to the school's principal Marcey Sorensen.

Rey Dorantes, 14, of the 2400 block of West Augusta Boulevard, a freshman, was shot and killed on Jan. 11. His death came about a month after another Clemente student, Jeffrey Stewart, 16, of the 5200 block of West Race Avenue, was shot and killed on Dec. 9.

"I'm sick of it," Sorensen said over the weekend. "How many more kids have to die before we do something? Our kids live in fear and because of that, they are incredibly resilient."

Colon was a senior who was preparing to attend college. Hours before the shooting, she had been watching President Barack Obama speak at Hyde Park Academy on the South Side about gun violence, according to her father.

"She said, 'About time they do something with the gun thing,' " Colon Jr. said, adding that Obama and other elected officials need to "make these people more afraid" to shoot each other.